Why is something "under" construction?

September 14, 2005 9:09 PM

Why is something "under" construction?

My wife, whose first language is not English, said that something was "in construction" - I corrected that to "under construction". She asked why the phrase uses "under" and I had no explanation. I websearched that 'construction' etymologically comes from "to pile up together", but that doesn't really require that the phrase use "under" to describe something in the process of being constructed - indeed "on" or "in" would seem equally aposite. Searching for the phrase "under construction" is not exactly productive on the internet, where a significant number of pages are in that state...

posted by birdsquared to writing & language (17 comments total)

maybe it's a corruption of "undergoing (the process of) construction" ?

that's a complete guess. hopefully someone who knows more will come along and give you an answer with some actual evidence. :)
posted by clarahamster at 9:23 PM on September 14, 2005

I am not a linguist, but I think it's just because languages tend to use different prepositions in phrases that otherwise translate to mean the same thing. For example, while English uses the phrase "in the morning", Spanish uses the phrase "por la mañana" to mean the same thing, even though the literal translation of "por" is "for" or "by". Prepositions seem to be idiomatic to their respective languages - for instance, when we say "He believes in God", we don't mean that he is inside of God while believing some unspecified thing.

Interestingly, Esperanto (the world's most successful constructed language, intended by its creator to be spoken by everyone across the globe) has a preposition, "je", that lacks a specific meaning - it just denotes the idea of a preposition. For example, the sentence "Li kredas je Dio" means "He believes in God". This speaks to the idiomatic nature of prepositions in the world's languages, and the difficulty in translating them.
posted by tepidmonkey at 9:39 PM on September 14, 2005

I'm trying to find the origin, but there are plenty of common idioms that cannot be adequately translated, or conveyed. I'm sure she has idioms in her first language.
posted by AllesKlar at 9:40 PM on September 14, 2005

See also: Why is something "under" way? Why is something "under" consideration?

(That's not an answer I know, but it might inspire one in someone smarter than me.)
posted by Jimbob at 9:40 PM on September 14, 2005

Maybe it's more useful to look at the entymology of under? In addition to "subordinate" there's also "between" and "among" from Old English. (link)

At least some uses of under seem to fit better with "between" and "among."
posted by sevenless at 10:07 PM on September 14, 2005

Might it not be that it came from signs saying, "[warning you are..]...under construction" to warn people that construction was overhead and that they were under it. A bunch of signs warning people that they were under construction might eventually lead people to believe the building was "under construction."
posted by pwb503 at 10:10 PM on September 14, 2005

Silly me - I looked up the etylomogy of both words, but looking at the definition of "under", particularly the ninth: "Undergoing or receiving the effects of", would seem to be the answer I was so clumsily looking for. So, clarahamster, your intuition is on the money. Thanks for the replies, folks.
posted by birdsquared at 10:17 PM on September 14, 2005

Samw reason something is taken under advisement versus taken into consideration. Or is under observation versus on display. I have no clue, personally. The prepositions seem pretty arbitrary to me, but I don't think there's much to be learned by picking apart the word construction in particular. There are lots and lots of cases to look at.
posted by scarabic at 11:19 PM on September 14, 2005

Esperanto ... has a preposition, "je", that lacks a specific meaning - it just denotes the idea of a preposition

That's a fair description of the old English prefix, a-

In this example, a pre-Romance-language version of the phrase would have been "a-building". But we probably borrowed this particular phrasing from French, which has sous la construction -- "under the building". Spanish has sobre construcción, showing that they have latin sub in common.

Arbitrary isn't really the right word for this. There's clearly an intended relationship, and in a more structured language like Latin the requirement to have certain prepositions with certain other constructions is perhaps clearer. I think many of these phrases actually come from obvious physical metaphors: "under observation" is pretty clear (you're looking down at it), "under discussion" (it's sitting there while you talk over it) and so forth. These are all Latin "process" words. The Anglo-Saxon equivalent is probably generally simpler: "on the table", "in talks", etc.

The main reason English is hard to learn is that our words and grammar come from all over -- German, French, direct from Latin, bits of Norse and Celtic here and there. And especially during the late Renaissance there was a conscious attempt to formalize the language along Latin lines, which was somewhat contrary to its roots. Thus a lot of phrases like "under construction" came into being, borrowed through French but hypercorrected to classical Latin -- then paired with an Old English preposition.

It's awkward. We know. But it's amazing in the right hands.
posted by dhartung at 1:48 AM on September 15, 2005

Understand?
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 1:59 AM on September 15, 2005

The main reason English is hard to learn....

I'd say it's hard if not impossible to master, but relatively easy to learn . Which is one reason (besides its economic utility) that it has become as widespread a second language as it has. That and the fact that even fairly rough handling is tolerated and understood.

That said, prepositions are a headache in any language.
posted by IndigoJones at 5:12 AM on September 15, 2005

I remember talking to an acquaintance from Quebec who was a native French speaker. He said one of the hardest things to wrap his mind around in learning English was these 'directional' words that make little sense.
Under Construction
Calm Down
Soup Up
Chill Out
Into Music
Once he pointed this out, of course I started noticing them all the time.
posted by juggler at 6:03 AM on September 15, 2005

Shoot, think of all the "utility infielder" verbs in English that depend on a preposition to define their meaning (actually, it's probably functionally a postposition in this case, although I'm sure a linguist could set me straight).

I put up with your little jibes
My mom put up peaches last week
Put up or shut up
He put down that chubby girl
You really put one over on that rube
The idea I'm trying to put across is that it is time to put away childish things

And so on. You can play the same game with "set" or "take."

Japanese has a relative dearth of prepositional words (and has one that's functionally a lot like the Esperanto je [which is interesting to learn about], ni [に]), and in many cases uses compound verbs or even nouns to achieve the effects demonstrated above. "Under construction" is kensetuchuu (建設中), three characters, the first two meaning "building" and the third meaning, roughly, "in the midst of." I think that's a noun.
posted by adamrice at 7:27 AM on September 15, 2005

Maybe it's more useful to look at the entymology of under?

heh.
pointing out typos usually bugs me, but this is hard to resist...
posted by mdn at 4:15 PM on September 15, 2005

Maybe it's more useful to look at the entymology of under?

heh.
pointing out typos usually bugs me, but this is hard to resist..

Pun intended? (and thanks for not pointing out MY typo above)

adamrice - I'm not sure I agree, since there is ni, de, e, made, kara, etc. Also, isn't "under construction" usually koujichuu(工事中)?

Oh, and tepidmonkey - if you're still reading - are people still "learning" Esperanto - i.e. is the number of Esperanto utilizers increasing, and if so, at roughly what pace?
posted by birdsquared at 9:43 PM on September 15, 2005

birdsquared--good call on 工事中 -- that's more idiomatic in most cases (unless perhaps it's an entire building under construction). But I stick with my point about the paucity of prepositions in Japanese. Look at all the prepositions we have in English just beginning with the letter A: about among across after against aside. Japanese uses a lot of words that aren't like prepositions, grammatically, to get the point across for most of those.
posted by adamrice at 12:58 PM on September 17, 2005

An interesting related issue here: misuse of English prepositions by a Dutch captain was apparently one important reason for the Tenerife disaster, the deadliest accidental plane crash in history. One 747 was taxiing on the runway in dense fog, and another was waiting for clearance. The captain told the tower "We are at take-off", which the tower understood to mean "we are at our take-off position", but by which he apparently meant "we are taking off (on our take-off)". His plane crashed into the other one, killing 583 people.

Standard phrases were introduced, and today international civil aviation uses simplified situational English, and avoids ambiguous phrases like "take-off".
posted by dhartung at 4:26 AM on October 10, 2005